Making lives more
comfortable and healthier

We are involved in community consultations, seeking local residents’ ideas on how to improve the neighbourhood surrounding the Tyseley industrial area: • Community facilities (buildings, green spaces, etc) • Homes • Public transport • Cars, parking, safety • Access to training and work

Working with Birmingham Voluntary Service CounWorking with Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC)’s BrumEnergy project www.BrumEnergy.info to provide energy-saving advice, principally targeted at those who are hard-to-reach, those in most need or those in hard-to-insulate homes. We also offer free home assessment visits to provide advice on energy efficiency and funding.

Making Acocks Greener into a ‘Living Laboratory' for companies to try out new technologies so we can measure and show what can be achieved organisations provide us with new technology and other innovations and demonstrate the benefits.

We worked with Birmingham City Council's Route to Zero team and the MECC Trust on the Green Homes Retrofit Grants. Within 6 weeks helped to generate 451 grant applications, of which more than 220 were successful, leading to £2M of retrofit work to private homes and 54 solar PV panels on Fox Hollies Forum.

University of Birmingham is running the BrumBIRD (Building Inventory for Retrofit: Demonstrator) project with Acocks Greener and the MECC Trust, to fly a drone-mounted infra-red camera over 5 terraces of homes to spot where heat is escaping.

We are setting up a one-stop-shop website for the village on behalf of Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum and Acocks Green Partnership: listing all the community associations and publicising their events, funded by the Coventry & Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust.

Worked with Birmingham Footsteps (Faith Groups for a Low Carbon Future www.footstepsbcf.org.uk) and the Baptist Church (and its halls) on Yardley Road to carry out an energy audit and plan for a major retrofit to reduce energy use and the carbon footprint while improving comfort.

Participating with Warmer Homes West Midlands https://warmerhomeswm.org.uk/ who bring advice and support helping residents to live in warmer and more energy efficient homes, bringing savings and enhanced quality of life.

In February, Acocks Greener will set up ‘SEBrum Energy Local Co-op' to make best use of our locally generated electricity. There will be 3 groups of Members from: homes with solar PV panels on their roof; organisations with large roof-top solar PV arrays (for example: businesses, public / community and religious buildings); and households not using their heating because of cost (spending more than a tenth of their income on energy bills) – these members are not required to have solar PV.